I suspect that I am not alone among voters in the United States who tear up a bit (President Obama also was emotional at his final rally in Des Moines, Iowa on Monday night) waiting in line to vote for the President of the United States.

Voting for president is a rare memorable privilege. I have a friend in New York City whose name is Alex Imich. Alex is 109 years old. Even though Alex first voted probably in the 1960s, he has still voted for president more times than I have.

He came to the United States after World War II, having survived the Nazis and the Gulag. He voted proudly in 2008 for Barack Obama. I haven’t spoken to him for a year, but if he’s able I have no doubt that he will do the same this year.

There are people in this land who disdain the system that makes me proud.

Three, for example:
–Karl Christian Rove, friend of a former president named George Walker Bush and the handler of millions of dollars in the name of voter manipulation;

–Richard Lynn “Rick” Scott, the governor of Florida, coincidentally also friend and former business partner of same said George Walker Bush. Scott has done everything possible to block Floridians from voting in a reliable way. Once again, voting in Florida, my former home state, exists somewhere between an embarrassment and a sick laughing stock;

–Jon A. Husted (somebody help me on his middle name), the secretary of state of the State of Ohio, who appears to travel in the same circles. Husted, operating on Rove-ian principles, has fought the rights of people in Ohio to vote quickly and easily.

I have no idea what moves these men as they willfully and cynically do everything possible to manipulate, suppress and block people from voting?

Theories ? They might say that the system is flawed and they have to represent the interests they believe in; or they might say that everybody does it, and why shouldn’t they? But to me, they come across as sad miserable wretches.

As the wonderful journalist Murray Kempton once observed, some people are so thoroughly vulgar that they have absolutely no idea of how vulgar they appear to others. These three cynics cum ideologues fit the mold.